JJ Worden

They might be 2.5" x 4". If I’m feeling chaotic, they might be 3" x 3". 

There’s a very specific and slightly stubborn reason for that extra half-inch. It all goes back to the dark ages of the internet.

The Golden Rule of the ATC

Way back when—not quite the dawn of Mail Art, but exactly when it started growing exponentially online—I was deep in the Artist Trading Card (ATC) community. (Any old-school internet folks remember Nervousness? Anyone? Bueller?) 

It was a rich, vibrant, and vital ecosystem of global creatives. We had exactly one sacred, unshakeable rule: The cards had to be 2.5" x 3.5" and they HAD to be traded. Never sold. 

It was entirely about the give and take. The pure freewill and sharing of art.

Enter the ACEO (and the Elder Scoff)

Fast forward to the early Oughts. Someone decided that trading wasn’t enough and wanted to start selling their cards. Thus, the ACEO (Art Cards, Editions and Originals) was born. Same size, but with a price tag.

As ATC elders, we scoffed. How dare they?! It felt like a capitalistic glitch in a beautifully pure system.

Breaking the Rules to Keep the Spirit

Almost thirty years later, that purist instinct still rankles a little bit. To my hands and my brain, 2.5" x 3.5" will always belong to the spirit of the trade. 

So, as I begin offering my own miniature portraits for sale, I’m changing the format. By stretching the boundaries to 2.5" x 4", I’m drawing a line between the past and the present. It’s my nod of respect to the old guard.

But make no mistake: whether my cards are traded or sold, every single square inch is still entirely imbued with the love, chaotic energy, and community spirit of those early Mail Art days.

The Spark: Choosing the Attitude

The Foundation: Orange Gesso and the Initial Lines 

The Blueprint: The Four-Colour Underpainting 

Building the Layers: Blocking in the Palette 

The Final Touches: Carving Out the Shadows 

The Initial Drawing

Digital Underpainting — Underpainting

Blocking in Colour - Phase 1

Blocking in Colour - Phase 2

Capturing Liz- Final

There is a specific kind of summer afternoon where the air is so heavy, you don't just feel the temperature—you SEE it. That blinding, overwhelming sensation of peak summer is exactly what I wanted to capture in my latest piece, "Facing the Heat." This painting is currently on display at the Lunenburg Art Gallery as part of the Sand, Sea and Sky group exhibition.

The Challenge of a Smaller Canvas

If you’ve followed my work for a while, you know I usually love to move across larger surfaces. Working on a much smaller scale at just 8x10 inches was a massive shift in gravity.

When you compress an expressive portrait down to this size, every single movement matters. I wanted to keep the application loose, intuitive, and immediate, but a smaller canvas demands a different level of focus. Every brushstroke had to be made with absolute intention. There was no room to hide a lazy mark or overwork a section—it required a delicate dance between restraint and raw energy.

Radiating Warmth Through White Space

The biggest conceptual hurdle was making a painting feel intensely hot while using a color palette dominated by white.

Usually, we associate heat with heavy, dense blocks of warm tones. Here, I wanted the background to mimic that overexposed, bleached-out quality of a scorching afternoon sun. By keeping the vast majority of the space stark and light, the figure has to carry the full weight of the temperature.

To push the vibrancy even further, I experimented with the shadows. Alongside my usual primary magenta, I introduced a deep, dominant teal for the cooler values. It created a brilliant, vibrating contrast against the blazing yellow and orange underpainting peeking through. The teal shadows don't just ground the figure; they make the surrounding whites feel like they are actively shimmering with heat.

Part of a Shared Horizon

"Facing the Heat" doesn't stand entirely alone. It is part of a thematic trilogy created specifically for the gallery show, sitting alongside two other pieces that explore different facets of our coastal summers—from the relentless gaze of a local beach gull to a vintage-inspired figure wading by the shore. Seeing them lined up on the easel together really emphasized how much fun it was to push the boundaries of scale and color for this series.

See it in Person

If you are in the area, please go check out the Sand, Sea and Sky show at The Lunenburg Art Gallery! Opening is Friday, July 3 from 5pm. I'll be there, come say "Hi!" The show runs until August 1, gallery hours: Wednesday - Sunday from 11am - 4pm.

Facing the Heat - Detail

Facing the Heat - Work in Progress

Facing the Heat - Trilogy

Facing the Heat - Finished Work

Every now and then, it’s incredibly healthy to throw yourself entirely out of your comfort zone. If you’ve been following my work for a while, you know how much I love diving straight into expressive color, rich paintings, and bold, intuitive brushwork. But the other day, I took a lesson that completely stripped away my favorite safety nets—namely color and fine detail—and forced me to focus entirely on one thing: structural value.

The assignment sounded simple on paper, but it turned out to be an incredibly challenging, eye-opening exercise in learning how to truly see.

The Exercise: Stripping It Down to Black and White

The lesson started with a scavenger hunt for multiple reference images. Once I had them, the real challenge began. We were told to scale things way down, tracing the core elements of our references into small, constrained 4"x4" squares. Shrinking the workspace immediately stops you from getting caught up in tiny details; you physically don't have the room for them.

Next came the hard part: finding just the shadow and the light. No mid-tone transitions, no soft blending, no color cues. To do this, I dug out a mismatch of grey markers. I ended up using four distinct tones: a light grey, a medium grey, what I thought was black (but turned out to be more of a deep charcoal dark grey), and an intensely deep, true black.

Using only these markers, I had to block out the shapes of light and shadow. It forces you to look at a face or a scene not as a collection of features, but as a puzzle of interlocking geometric values. You have to squint until the details blur away and only the abstract structure remains.

From Marker to Oil: Expectation vs. Reality 

The Next Challenge 

From the very first sketch, I knew I wanted this character to be at odds with her environment. The plan was always to place her in front of a monotone, architectural world — a rigid backdrop that would act as a foil for a much more vibrant, expressive portrait. I wanted to see if I could capture that feeling of being physically present in a space while remaining entirely "other."

10 Questions for artists ran for 10 weeks, 5 years ago. (5 YEARS?!?) These posts still receive a lot of interest so I don't want to remove them. If you enjoyed them, maybe consider joining my newsletter in case I decide to add new ones to the mix.

Enjoy!

 Since the start of the year, I've been kind of obsessed with neon colours. Orange and Pink to be specific. I know. Who IS this person?!? From darks to uber bright. Just goes to show, change can happen. Even for old farts like me. 

I wish I could say I'm all refreshed from my trip to the UK, all raring to go, brainmeats filled to the brim with the NEW and EXCITING. Except. We didn't go to the UK, and had to cancel due to some stupid flu bug we caught. I'm still not completely over it *hack hack*. And I am COMPLETELY over it.

It's been a very busy start to the year between the weekly Let's Face It lessons, tweaking my website(all shiny'n'new!) as well as trying to make the work reflect who I am along this crazy art journey, I feel like I've been pulled in a bunch of directions and frankly, I'm ready for Winter to be over and have a bit of a break. Good thing there's a trip to the UK in the offing.

Sometimes you think your work is All That And A Bag of Chips. And sometimes, it isn't.

I know this is going to be controversial particularly where I am seeing SO much pushback on anything Art and AI related. But. Read on a bit. I have things to say and maybe this will make you rethink your position.

I often worry...well, at least wonder...if other folks see what I see when they see my work. I mean. Does it really matter? After all, it's the viewers VIEW that decides whether they want to take a piece of art home with them. But. Maybe. My reason behind the artworks makes them more interesting or more relatable or more, I guess, palatable? Or not. I have no idea, to be honest with you.

WHY DON'T THEY LIKE ME?

I haven't done a process post in a while and I thought this painting might be a great example. At first glance, this photo may give the illusion of calm, maybe even happy but it was the reflection of his glasses and that squint that made me take a second look.

 I can still say that, right? It's only January, after all.

So what does 2026 have in store for me? Well, as I mentioned in my 2025 wrap up, I won a place in the Let's Face It year long course and to be honest, I'm still very much loving portraits. That became abundantly clear whilst I've spent the last few weeks honing my website...new artist statements, revamped look, new sections etc...I was just so jazzed to see how everything looked and sounded.

Greetings Friends. Just a quick recap of Let's Face It 2025 as well as to mention that whilst I hadn't planned on doing another round, I won a place so I guess it'll be another year of portraiture for me.

Some changes.

I'll be focusing on making the lessons, the paintings MINE. My own reference photos, my choice of medium and substrate but trying to stay true to the intention of what the amazing instructors are offering. And to that end, these may actually go up for sale as my DH has decided to become my art agent. Kind of a dream come true...I can make art and let someone else do the promotion and footwork to get them seen. As long as we don't kill each other.*

So the finale of 2025.

Welp. Life! Amiright? TIME! AMIRIGHT?!?!

Suffice it to say, there were/are personal hurdles (not my story to tell) and physical ones (like breaking an ankle in the heat of the summer) to challenge me. 

The constant at any rate has been my dedication (for the most part) to my year-long "Let's Face It" course. So I'm just gonna post #allthethings 

Let's seeeee...where did we leave off? Ah yes! Weeks 19 and 20 with Sabra.

In my last post I mentioned how I'd been following Dylan Sara's Daily Portrait Practice for more, well, watercolour portrait practice. For the month of April, Dylan had given himself a challenge to create looser, wet-in-wet sketches and that fit in well with my goals as well.